The Abilities and Achievements of Orientals in North America PDF
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This is a volume in PERSONALITY AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY A Series of Monographs, Texts, and Treatises Under the Editorship of David T. Lykken A complete list of titles in this series appears at the end of this volume. The Abilities and Achievements of Orientals in North America Philip E. Vernon Department of Educational Psychology The University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada 1982 ACADEMIC PRESS A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers New York London Paris San Diego San Francisco Sâo Paulo Sydney Tokyo Toronto COPYRIGHT © 1982, BY ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING, OR ANY INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER. ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. Ill Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003 United Kingdom Edition published by ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. (LONDON) LTD. 24/28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DX Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Vernon, Philip Ewart. The abilities and achievements of Orientals in North America. (Personality and psychopathology) Β i bliography: p. Includes index. 1. Chinese Americans--Abi1ity testing. 2. Japanese Americans--Abi1ity testing. 3- National characteristics, Chinese, k. National characteristics, Japanese. I. Title. II. Series. BF432. C5V+7 155.8^95073 82-1700 ISBN 0-12-718680-8 AACR2 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 82 83 84 85 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Preface The experiences of oriental immigrants in the United States and Canada— Chinese and Japanese—provide a remarkable example of adverse environment not affecting the development of intelligence. There is no doubt that, in the past, they were subjected to great hardships, hostility, and discrimination. They were regarded as a kind of inferior species, who could be used for unskilled labor and menial jobs, but could never be accepted as equals into the white community. And yet the Orientals survived and eventually flourished until they came to be regarded as even higher achievers, educationally and vocationally, than the white majority. Though these facts are well established, no psychologist seems to have pulled together all the literature concerned with the abilities, achievements, and person- ality characteristics of oriental immigrants and their descendants. When I started to search, I found that there were far more relevant books and articles than I had expected. This book, then, aims to summarize as much as possible the published material, to relate it to the cultural background from which the immigrants came and to their checkered history in North America (including Hawaii and Canada), and to discover the implications, if any, for psychological theory. It contains no startling new conclusions, but it does help one to see some of the problems of heredity, environment, and acculturation in a fresh light. This will, I hope, account for the apparently odd juxtaposition of historical and observational chap- ters with fairly technical psychological chapters. Actually, a polymath would be needed to integrate adequately the historical, cultural, sociological, linguistic, and psychological materials. I do not claim any particular expertise in disciplines other than the psychological, but I have read a considerable number of books by better qualified writers and have striven to present their conclusions as succinctly and impartially as possible. Since com- pleting most of the work, Preis werk and Perrot's (1978) devastating criticism of the ethnocentrism of almost all historical studies of foreign cultures came to my notice. As they point out, every writer injects his or her own values into the interpretation of other cultures. For example, one author stated that "Japan was ix χ Preface fifty years ahead of China, who refused to copy Western habits." Clearly, the implication is that oriental groups are backward if they do not accept Western technology and democracy. Yet both the Chinese and Japanese have regarded themselves as supremely civilized for centuries. Obviously I cannot escape from this type of bias, but I have made extensive psychological observations and/or carried out research in at least a dozen widely varying foreign countries, from the Arctic to the Antipodes, and from Peru to Uganda (see Vernon, 1969). Although this book is an exploration of racial and ethnic differences, it is most certainly not "racist" in intent or conclusions. Occasionally I suggest that there are some biological differences—mental as well as physical—between Orientals and Occidentals, but in such cases, I also give careful consideration to possible alternative environmental causes. In most cases both genetic and environmental or cultural factors are involved. Except that the term racial always implies to me that there are recognizable differences in physical attributes (see the Glossary), both this term and ethnic (or racial-ethnic) overlap so much that I have used them almost interchangeably. I have been similarly loose in using Caucasian, white, American, United States, and Westerners as generally synonymous terms. A great deal of psychological research in Japan is published by Japanese psychologists in English-language journals, and a more limited amount comes from Hong Kong, Taiwan, or mainland China. I have thought it relevant, there- fore, to outline the current cultural situation in Japan and Hong Kong (but I have not attempted to deal with modern China). Furthermore, the present influx of oriental immigrants into North America is larger than ever before; hence, it is necessary to take some account of the countries from which they come. Unfortu- nately, there is very little information available regarding differences between Orientals arriving now and those who came in the past and their descendants. Inevitably a large proportion of the book consists of brief accounts of a great many investigations. Thus it may seem to some readers like a series of entries from filing cards. In fact I have tried to extract the main features of each publication, evaluate these, and organize the findings into a fairly readable whole. I have avoided a great deal of technical detail. Indeed, other critics may complain because I have seldom quoted standard deviations or probability statis- tics. (However, in three of the chapters in which the details threatened to become excessive, I have relegated them to appendixes.) But I hope to have provided a guide that will help the highly qualified psychologist to consult the original publications if fuller information is needed. At the same time I have tried to keep the material sufficiently simple to attract the interest of lay Chinese and Japanese readers and those members of the general public who have dealings with them and would like to know more about them. A short glossary is appended for readers unfamiliar with psychological research. For those who feel defeated by the sections on mental tests, there are less technical summaries at the ends of Chapters 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 16. Preface xi I feel that an apology is due to women readers. A great deal of the research, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, was carried out with boys or men only, and many publications that have studied both sexes have not separated their findings. In many cases I decided, with regrets, to say little about differences between boys and girls or men and women in order to simplify the presentation. Acknowledgments This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from The Pioneer Fund (New York). I am most grateful to the fund's president, Harry F. Weyher, for his support and encouragement. I thank my wife Dorothy for her assistance in many aspects of this research, particularly in collecting information from the Departments of Education in California and Hawaii, and the Calgary Board of Education. My son Tony (representing the third generation of Vernon psychologists) also helped in track- ing references and checking the text. Next, I am much indebted to Arthur Jensen, who first drew my attention to this topic and encouraged me to study it. He also provided printouts of his unpub- lished investigations. I acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of Anita Li of the University of Calgary, who read and commented on the Chinese, Canadian, and Hong Kong chapters, and S. Guy, a native Japanese who has lived for many years in the United States and Canada, who made helpful comments on the Japanese chapters. Neither of these ladies is, of course, responsible for any faulty judgments I may have made. I have also had much help from J. W. C. Chan of the Education Department of Hong Kong. Valuable information was provided by several staff officers of the Education Departments in the cities of Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Calgary, and by psy- chologists at the University of Hawaii. Others who assisted include F. Hsia, A. Sibatani, and L. Wang. Finally I am grateful for the facilities provided by Roy Brown and Jane Vaughan of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Calgary, and for the excellent typing of Linda Culshaw. Permission to reprint the following tables, granted by publishers, authors, and other proprietors of copyright, is gratefully acknowledged. Table 2.1: Graham, 1926; copyright 1926 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission of the publisher and author. Tables 2.3, A. 1, A.2, A.3, and A.4: Re- printed with permission of A. R. Jensen. Table 5.3: Chan, Eysenck, & Götz, 1980; reprinted with permission of author and publisher. Table 7.5: Smith, 1942; xiii xiv Acknowledgments copyright 1942 by The Journal Press. Table 7.8: Werner, Simonian, & Smith, 1968; copyright 1968 by The Journal Press. Table 11.3: Kline and Lee, 1972; reprinted with permission of authors and publisher. Table 11.5: Tsushima & Hogan, 1975; reprinted with permission of Tsushima and Hogan and Heldref Publications. Table 12.2: Backman, 1972; copyright 1972 by the American Educational Research Association. Tables 13.1 and 13.2: McCarthy & Wolfle, 1975; copyright 1975 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Tables 14.3 and 14.4: Tuddenham, Brooks, & Milkovich, 1974; copy- right 1974 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted by permission of the publisher and authors. Table B.2: Tanaka, 1972; reprinted with permission of the publisher. 1 The Immigration of Chinese to the United States CHRONOLOGY 1784 Earliest trade relationships of Americans and British with China. 1815 First Chinese visited America. 1824 et seq. American and European missionaries in China. 1842 Treaty of Nanking, following the opium wars, gave territorial and trading rights in five ports to foreign countries. Hong Kong ceded to Britain. 1848 First importation of Chinese laborers to California. 1849 Gold rush in California. 1850 Further Chinese laborers imported for railroad building in the West. 1850-64 Taiping uprising: warfare with Britain and France; United States neutral. 1850s-80s Demonstrations and riots against Chinese in San Francisco. Im- portation of Chinese laborers to eastern states, often as strike- breakers. 1852 First immigration to Hawaii. 1858 Immigration to British Columbia, with discovery of gold. 1868 Burlingame Treaty, limiting Chinese immigration to the United States. 1882 Exclusion Act passed by Congress barring further immigration (ex- cept of limited categories); extended until 1924. 1890-95 First Sino-Japanese war weakened the Chinese Empire. 1899-1901 Boxer uprising against foreigners. Territorial rights of trading nations imposed. 1911 Sun Yat-sen's rebellion against Manchu government. Downfall of Imperial Dynasty; foundation of republic. 1915 Japan 's imposition of 4 421 Demands, ' ' making China a protectorate. 1924 All immigration of Orientals to United States prohibited. l 2 1. The Immigration of Chinese to the United States 1931 Japanese seizure of Manchuria. 1937 Second Sino-Japanese war. Massacre of Nanking. Occupation of China; installation of a puppet government. 1941 Pearl Harbor. Improved attitudes toward Chinese in United States. 1945 British army defeated Japanese in China. War between Kuomintang and Communists. 1946 Chinese wives and children admitted to United States. 1949 Chiang Kai-shek defeated. Nationalist government removed to Taiwan. 1954 All American racial legislation abolished. 1965 Free immigration of Chinese, dependent on skills or family relations, as with other nationals. 1972 United States recognized Communist government. SOURCES OF INFORMATION The main sources of information on which I have relied include: W. C. Smith, Americans in Process (1937); F. L. K. Hsu, Under the Ancestors' Shadow (1948); Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (1960); S. C. Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant (1969); S. M. Lyman, The Asian in the West (1970); F. L. K. Hsu, The Challenge of the American Dream (1971); and articles by Stoessinger (1970), Fersh (1972), and Alsop & Satter (1976). DEMOGRAPHY Table 1.1 provides census figures for Chinese and Japanese populations in the American mainland and Hawaii from 1860 to 1970. Note the rapid initial rise of Chinese in mainland America, but a continuous drop after 1890 when legal restrictions on entry were enforced. A slow rise occurred after 1920, and a much more rapid expansion took place after World War II, when the Immigration Act was repealed. In Hawaii, immigration started somewhat later, and the total number of Chinese on the islands stayed at 20,000-30,000 from 1890 to 1940. Thereafter, the numbers began to creep up, and are probably still doing so, though the increase may well be due as much to natural growth as to further immigration. Table 1.2 provides 1970 census figures for all of the main ethnic minorities, with percentages of the population both in the United States as a whole, and in California and Hawaii. Clearly, Chinese and Japanese constitute much larger percentages in these two states than in the rest of the country. Just about half of
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